The end

It is done. A settlement agreed. In a month or so, when the order’s officially stamped, I’ll be un-married, decree absoluted. Until this December, I had little foot hold in my future; clinging to a mountain face, there was no up nor down.

Almost twenty-four months of waiting and unknowing and fuming at legal letters received on a late Friday afternoon. But I was well taken care of. If my solicitor was a fire cracker, then my barrister was a super-charged nova. And I’m certainly not back wards in coming forwards. I threw all the elements at this. Earth gave me strength, boundary. Fire, a warrior-spirit. With Water I self-soothed and self-cared, while Air kept my thoughts nimble and astute and focused. On the day of the hearing, the Rocky-theme buzzed around my head… She’sgetting stronger, getting stronger. I didn’t run a boxer’s five miles or pummel a leg of lamb but I did my down ward dogs, knocked back a giantess of a green smoothie. I was as ready (and nervous) as I could be.

Court is a strange place. A sort of no-mans-land. A legal transit zone. A chicken-coup of argument and opposition. Arriving in one place, departing in another, having either lost or won or compromised a fragile position. I sat in a small neutral room with a round table, four chairs and a bitty blue carpet. His was the same. I ate sandwiches and crisps and chia seed pudding, became rather thirsty, as our barristers flittered like small birds between our rooms disputing the same worm.

We arrived at middle ground.

Then the moment came. Down in a court room, the line of reality was drawn, made concrete. After the end of an adrenalin-stoked and artificially-lit day, the judge, wishing us well, proclaimed we were now free to move forwards with our lives.